


peace for the morning

by Anonymous



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Getting Back Together, fic of a fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26183662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Now that it's all out in the open, Emori and Murphy consider what to do next. Modern AU.
Relationships: Emori/John Murphy (The 100)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19
Collections: Anonymous





	peace for the morning

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Two Photos from Last Christmas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159963) by [Debate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debate/pseuds/Debate). 



> Directly inspired by Debate's wonderful "Two Photos from Last Christmas". I loved this take on a Memori reconciliation in a modern setting, and this is a sort of continuation from that scenario.

“You should stay,” says Emori. “It’s Christmas and it’s pouring outside—you walked here, too, didn’t you? You shouldn’t go out on your own.”

There are plenty of reasons that him staying over is a bad idea, but even Murphy has to admit, those two are pretty compelling. They wouldn’t have been if he had been in and out as he originally planned, but he can hear the rain drumming on the rooftop and against the windows, and there’s no point in agreeing to be better, to start over, if he gets hit by a car on the way back like some tearjerker Lifetime special.

“Okay,” he says, his voice still soft and awkward with hope at what they’ve decided, and Emori’s relieved smile is so wide that he doesn’t feel even a trace of the guilt that he probably should about how easily he lets himself slide back into the idea of being happy with her.

“I know where Raven keeps the spare blankets,” he says, unfolding himself to stand, holding out his hand to Emori to hoist her up and nearly bursting with joy when she takes it so easily, completely natural. “Uh, I might need to use your shower first, though.”

“Of course.” But now the smile is gone off Emori’s face, way too soon; she looks confused. “But why would she mind?”

“I did just get off a twelve hour shift,” says Murphy, a little amused, because he’s pretty sure he looks it, even weather beaten as he is. “I don’t wanna dirty up her couch.”

Emori blinks, and unexpectedly, flushes pink. “I mean, you should shower, but uh…I didn’t think you’d stay on the couch.”

He barely registers the significance of that because Emori’s rushing past it. “Not because—only because we can talk, and hear each other – but maybe…”

“No, sorry—yeah, you’re right,” Murphy manages to push out, past his heart clamming up his throat.

Again, Murphy can’t quite fault her logic, even if it does make his mouth dry, his head dangerously close to spinning. Only a few hours ago he had considered not even bringing the picture, and now they’ve eaten together, he’s been in her room, hanging it for her, and she’s told him that she wants to try again, among the half-hidden, bulky remnants of their first life together. It’s a little much for him to process.

It’ll take a lot more than good fortune, to try again, but he doesn’t know how else to describe it. There is no such thing as coincidence, and fate is too saccharine a concept for either of them.

Despite agreeing, it’s still too early to go to bed, and Murphy blocks it from mind—no point in considering something even more impossible, not when he’s only got her hand, the big one, wrapped over his. The one she hid until she didn’t, and he wishes he had been in the right mind to appreciate how much that meant for her.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks, his voice low.

Emori wets her lips as she thinks, and he wishes again she wouldn’t do that when they are so close.

“Why didn’t you come over earlier?” she asks at last. “If you felt like this?”

Her shoulders are tense, like she knows it is almost too much to ask, but he doesn’t fault her for wanting to know. Still, there’s a prickle of irritation that goes down his spine that, in worse days, might have assumed she was playing dumb, trying to cut at him.

“I didn’t know where I stood with you,” he says honestly. “I didn’t want to make you hate me anymore than you already did or that I was trying to fight for a lost cause and mess with your life.”

He must be doing better, to even say that much, even tired and confused and overwhelmed, without that cutting edge that drove them both apart in those last awful months.

“Did you really think I hated you?” Emori asks, and her voice is so small that his heart drops right down to his stomach, because there’s that wet break in her voice again, and god, what kind of asshole is he that he’s made her cry more than once tonight?

“Emori,” he says softly, like he used to, his fingers tightening around hers.

“Because I never have,” she says, fiercely. “Never. I couldn’t—I couldn’t stay while you were like that, but I…”

She falters, presses her lips tightly together and shakes her head, but the hand under his squeezes back, too tightly, but he likes that, likes that she so clearly wants him to stay.

“I didn’t know what to say,” she says at last, almost a whisper. “I was so glad, when you started showing up again, and Bellamy was saying you were doing better. Raven, too. I kept wanting to ask about your classes, what you were doing…but I didn’t know what to say, and you kept your distance.”

Her grip on his hand is almost painful, the bones creaking together, but he likes it, likes how it grounds them here and how it gives credence to her insistence that she wants him here. The part of him that says she can do better still hovers, doubtful, at the back of his mind, but it’s stayed by her grip on his hand.

“You didn’t ask them?” he prompts her quietly. “They would have told you. Raven could have told you.”

Truth be told, this part confuses him – while he was spiraling and before he’d gotten his head back on straight, it seemed like Emori was so firmly blended with the rest of their group, that it was effortless, and easy for her to trust them and care for them and move beyond him. Later, when he started joining back up with the get-togethers and events and potlucks, he remembered to be happy for it.

“They said you were doing better. I was…” she hesitates. “I was scared to ask. I wanted you to be happy, but I think I was scared that being happy meant that you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.” She bites her lip. “And that seemed wrong. I wanted you to be happy, John, regardless of whether it’s with me or apart. I just…I don’t think I realized how much I wanted it to still be with me.”

Murphy just shakes his head. Here he’s been, uncertain of where he stands, convinced that he’d driven away Emori for good, in agony at the thought of it. And then there’s Emori now, wide-eyed, her grip as real as everything else that he’s been building up, these last few months.

He kisses her first, but she returns it, hard, pinning him down to the mattress and he lets her, just enjoying the weight of her body on his again, the curve of her spine as he runs his hand down the length of it, hands slipping under the hem until he feels her skin.

Her shudder reverberates through him, and she presses further into him, and every cell in his body strains upwards, towards her, tightening him, making him ache.

He doesn’t want to stop, not when she breaks away only to press open-mouthed kisses down his neck, presses her tongue against his pulse, applies her teeth to make him gasp. Her skin is warm under her sweater, and as soft as he remembers.

Still. This is moving fast.

“Emori,” he rasps, even her name, the only word his brain can even comprehend making at this time, taking effort. “Emori, is this what you want?”

She kisses his throat again, lingering there before shifting over him again. Their faces are so close he can barely see her but for the openness of her gaze.

“Yes,” she whispers. “I’m tired of dreaming. You?”

He kisses her again, harder, because he’s tired of dreaming, too. Dreaming of what he lost, what he could have had. Here she is now, and here he is, very real and warm under his hands. She shifts up to straddle him and pulls off her shirt and then they’re skin to skin, lost to the world and enjoying the oblivion they visit together.

~

When he wakes up, the space in the bed next to him is empty but still warm and rumpled, and Raven is staring at him from the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms folded.

“Merry Christmas,” she says, in lieu of good morning, stealing his line while he just stares at her like a fool. He should have a quip ready on the tip of his tongue, the way he usually does, some sharp Murphy-ism about what he’s doing in her apartment and his (as far as Raven knows) ex’s bed, but his body misses Emori’s warmth and his mind is still catching up.

“I didn’t know what to think, when I saw your shoes in the hall last night,” says Raven, almost thoughtfully, and it doesn’t sound like she’s about to call him an idiot, which is a miracle in itself.

“I didn’t mean to come in,” he blurts out, whether in defense of himself (against what? He doesn’t regret it) or just in statement of fact, he’s not entirely sure. “I just wanted to give her something, without her seeing me. But she saw me.”

“I figured,” says Raven drolly, her gaze sliding from him to the picture nailed on the wall and back. He braces himself for some kind of threat or angry warning, twin to the angry comments she’s been giving him for months for being an idiot. He certainly would deserve it.

But Raven surprises him. “I wondered how long it would take when you two finally got a chance to talk one on one,” she says, softening. “You were dragging your feet there for a while. But hey, if you’ve finally pulled your head out of your ass, I’m not going to say anything.”

“What, no smart remarks?” asks Murphy, not really asking for trouble—he’s honestly confused.

She shrugs. “The first thing she’s put up in this apartment in six months to make it hers is _your_ gift. Read the room, Murphy. It’s not that hard to figure out.”

He can see that now. Maybe Raven’s eyerolls had been for more than a general disdain for his pathetic behavior – of all of their friends, she’s been living with both sides of the story over the last six months. She probably knew more about his and Emori’s feelings towards each other than they had, as it turns out.

“I didn’t know,” he says, and as a defense, it’s useless, but it is the truth.

“Well, now you do,” says Raven crisply. “Don’t forget it. You guys had a good thing, and there isn’t a reason that you can’t have it again.”

Sitting here completely naked while talking about his relationship doesn’t exactly make Murphy feel great, so he leans over the bed to go for his clothes.

Raven recoils in the doorway. “Ugh, _Murphy_.”

“Unless you want a show, Reyes, I’d turn around right now.”

She rolls her eyes but does what he asks. He finds his boxers and pants easily enough, and is about to get down and peer under the bed for his shirt (couldn’t have gone far, it wasn’t exactly the throes of passion, more an affirmation of something long missed).

“I can get you a spare shirt of Zeke’s,” Raven offers. “You’ll probably fit.”

Murphy looks up. “You know what happened to my shirt?”

“John?” The voice of his missing bedmate floats through the doorway. “Are you awake?”

“Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” Raven reports, beaming when Murphy bares his teeth half heartedly at her.

Emori appears in the doorway behind Raven, going up on tiptoe to see over Raven’s shoulder and, ah, _that’s_ where his shirt went. It’s incredibly stupid how pleased it makes him, how certain that this time, they’ll get it right, if she’s wearing his things as her own less than twenty-four hours after they officially made up.

“I had to call Otan,” she says by way of explanation for her absence, squeezing past Raven, handing him a mug of coffee with her smaller hand, the larger one wrapped around her own mug.

Murphy grunts his acknowledgment and takes a too large swallow of the coffee. Otan and him have never been close, but Otan had treated him fine when he was making Emori was happy, and Murphy is not entirely sure Otan would forgive him the way that Emori has.

“I only told him about the picture,” says Emori, almost like she’s read his mind, and shouldn’t it not be this easy, to just slide back into these old habits again? Shouldn’t there be old-fashioned groveling and renting of garments and all of that chivalric romance garbage? Because he would, if he had to. “I’m gonna wait on the rest of it.”

“Smart call,” manages Murphy. Emori grins and bends over to peck him on the lips.

“Not while I’m here,” says Raven, shielding her eyes pointedly away but also not moving out of the doorway.

“Sorry, Raven,” says Emori guiltily. “We can go out for breakfast so you can have the place to yourself again.”

Raven shrugs. “Don’t do anything on my behalf. If you have things to discuss, do what makes you comfortable. Don’t get stuck in your head again. Maybe clear out some of these boxes so Emori can actually make this room hers and live like a human.”

“We’ll figure it out,” says Emori quickly, and right, living arrangements. He’s on a new lease and living apart might be the best thing to do for right now, while he deals with stretching his limits and she can take up her own space.

“Good,” says Raven, and then finally detaches from the doorway. “I’m glad you guys are going to try again. As long as Murphy keeps his pants on, he can stay, and I won’t blab to the group chat about this.”

“Thanks, Raven,” calls Murphy, even though she’s already gone, not as sarcastically as he means to be. They probably have to tell the group sooner rather than later, not try to keep secrets. “So, we’ve managed to blow at least half of this taking-it-slow business already.”

“Yeah,” says Emori, looking a little embarrassed but not the least regretful. He certainly doesn’t have any, although he really needs more of a nap, given that he ended up staying up way past his bedtime, but that’s not just on him. He leans around Emori to set his cup back on the bedside table and takes the opportunity to pull her back on the bed, eliciting a squeak and an elbow to the ribs.

They get comfortable. Emori rests her chin on his shoulder, and he lets his arm come up to wrap around her, gratified at how she curls into him.

“You don’t want to move into my place,” he says, without really explaining his thought process. “It’s pretty bare bones in there. ‘S all right for me, but I’m not going to be playing host anytime soon.”

“Well, I wasn’t angling for that,” she points out, amused. “I’ve got this lease with Raven through July. That gives us time to talk things through. Space to figure out how to do better. And actual space for this room, if you take some of this stuff over to your place.”

It’s both a sting and a balm to hear her tease him so easily again, and Murphy wonders how long those sensations will be twinned within him. Maybe that’s when he’ll know they’re ready, that they are secure, when the pleasure of her is no longer tinged by the pain of having been apart.

“Yeah,” he says, and folds her hand with his, kisses her knuckles. “I think I can do that. But only if you help me hang some of that shit up. Fair is fair.”

He can feel her smile through his shirt.

“Fair is fair,” she agrees, and it really is going to be a good year, this year.


End file.
